Projects

The research project MORAL investigates the socio-moral development of children and adolescents with a strong focus on intergroup processes and social cognition. Another focus of the project is the training of educators and teachers regarding social exclusion among children and adolescents.

Project MotivO aims at investigating and comparing motivational aspects of reading achievement across orthographies (German vs. Hebrew). Within the context of a cooperation project, German and Israeli 2nd and 4th Graders will be compared regarding their reading motivation and reading achievement in a cross-language research design to detect positive or negative feelings towards reading as well as changes across time.

Investigating emotional expectation and appraisal processes in children aged 8-12

The project NEDA investigates the relationship between the development of reading and spelling skills and the development of neural auditory processing in elementary school children.

Project NEIS is concerned with the development of self-regulatory skills – the ability to perform goal-oriented behavior – in children aged between 5 and 8 years.

The project NeuroBind investigates the neural bases of the attachment system in children with different attachment styles using neuroimaging techniques (structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging). To activate their attachment system, children are shown different attachment relevant pictures and are asked to imagine themselves in secure and dangerous social situations. Correlations between brain activity and emotional reactions in response to those specific social situations are analyzed.

The project PaSS evaluates the social validity of school-based prevention programmes that aim to foster social skills and reduce aggressive behaviour.

As neuroscientific knowledge about brain function accumulates, it becomes increasingly important to derive a set of overarching general principles about how the human brain works. One promising approach is the concept of predictive coding, which posits that the brain functions like a prediction machine; internal models in the brain predict future states against which incoming […]

This project evaluates the potential of predictions generated by students to improve their learning. Further, it investigates the mechanisms that determine its success and asks whether there are age-related differences in its effectiveness.

The PROMPT project is developing an evidence-based, child-friendly prototype of a learning planner application to support students in self-regulated learning with digital media. The final version of the prototype will be made freely available for widespread use.